Brainstorm
Force of Will
Lion's Eye Diamond
Counterbalance
Sensei's Divining Top
Tarmogoyf
Phyrexian Dreadnaught
Goblin Lackey
Standstill
Natural Order
Delver decks are not aggro decks. They're tempo decks. So yeah, aggro can't beat Miracles. Though to be fair, aggro can't beat much of anything anymore.Originally Posted by dte
Oh, no, definitely. My plan would likely be Flash. But I'd be figuratively willing to stake dosh on MUD being the field favorite after you account for the people just bringing whatever they have on-hand.
The tournament I started is over. You should join the next one.
...4 Minds Desire....
Delver decks are kind of the definition of "aggro-control" decks, and some Pro Players (like Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa) even argue that Legacy Delver decks are the definition of "aggro" and not even "aggro-control":
From http://www.channelfireball.com/artic...ayhouse-aggro/ :
A third approach is the Aggro with Disruption - those decks do not have any reach, but they have answers, and they can stop the opponent from doing whatever it is they want to do. There are two main forms of disruption - counterspells and discard. Aggro with Discard has fallen a little out of favor since Suicide Black became bad, and now the closest we have to that is Jund, though Jund is not really a pure aggro deck. In the counterspells department, we have a lot more examples - UW humans with Mana Leak is one. The place you’ll find the most Aggro with Disruption is not Standard, though, it’s Legacy - take Caleb’s deck from the last GP:
[deck]4 Misty Rainforest
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Taiga
2 Tropical Island
3 Volcanic Island
4 Wasteland
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Nimble Mongoose
1 Scavenging Ooze
2 Snapcaster Mage
2 Tarmogoyf
4 Brainstorm
2 Chain Lightning
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
1 Forked Bolt
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Ponder
1 Predict
4 Stifle
1 Thought Scour[/deck]
This deck might look like aggro-control, but it really isn’t - it’s an aggro deck. “But PV, it has counterspells, card drawing and removal, why isn’t it aggro-control?” - Because you don’t ever use those elements to control the game! You see, terminology is not actually important - you don’t get match points for correctly identifying what a deck is called. If you want to call any deck with creatures and counterspells aggro-control, be my guest - as long as it makes sense to you, it’s fine. What you do get points for, however, is playing your deck correctly, and this deck will not play like an aggro-control deck, it will play like aggro. Every control element that you have you’re using to kill them. You don’t want the game to go any long, you want it finished as soon as possible, because, much like aggro, your cards get a lot worse in the late game. In fact, I’d say Standard Delver itself is already on the verge of being an aggro deck to me, since it shares a lot of those traits (though ultimately I think it has enough control in it that it plays like aggro-control, otherwise nothing would be aggro-control).
Tell me how and you will get a Golden Ticket. You could unrestrict it in Vintage without much effect, but even considering such a hard-to-build-around-yet-still-infinite-variance-attached-to-it in a world with consistent t1 kills and Shops... yeah, get the Golden Ticket.
Humphrey is always correct.
We're getting off-topic here, but I was wondering how strong leyline combo would be as a metagame choice in that format, and that kind of deck could do all sorts of nasty stuff with turn 1 balance. On reflection, I'm not sure that anything is going to be able to compete with academy decks that can use 4x Tinker, Memory Jar and Windfall.
I feel like Merfolk does just fine against Miracles, it just gets wrecked by other aggros in the format right now .
“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle".
- Albert Einstein
Does anyone have a link to those?My little spies tell me there's a "banless" Legacy tournament at GP Chiba this weekend. Not sure what exactly that means, but it should be fun to see the results of it
I'm also not sure why we're conflating "aggro being a tier 1 archetype" and "a healthy format".
I guess is depends on how one defines Aggro, but there are decks that are more aggro then combo/control that are strong so aggro should meat the health levels for most players.
Though legacy is a format where you need to be able to interact on more levels then just creature combat, so decks like most delver lists are probably what aggro NEEDS to look like in legacy, and I guess some people do not like that "drop creatures, turn them sideways and nothing else" decks are not strong, because they do not meet the player interaction requirements of Legacy.
I don't think so. The point of playing aggro was never to beat combo, that should be well understood. The point of playing it was to beat up on blue decks that were geared more towards beating combo and/or each other. The problems with the format have a lot to do with blue decks getting to the point where they could beat aggro AS WELL AS combo. Thus, the part of blue predator is now filled primarily by fringe prison decks like Lands and MUD (and of course DnT, which is widely considered a control deck despite its high creature count).
Lord of the Chalice
Stompy Discord: https://discord.gg/6cesvkz
The history of this thread and recent posts disagree with the sound logic of your post. Haven't you read all those complaints about only blue/black being able to meaningfully interact with T1/2 combo decks and the talk about S&T over the last year(s)? If the crowd in question would accept that combo is a bad matchup for (linear) Aggro, we wouldn't have the sheer Volume of discussion, but focus on the following matter:
Since the days of Tarmogoyf/CounterTop this idea is outdated imo. The whole history of blue midrange decks that followed after (Bant Countertop, Bant Aggro, etc.) and printings like SFM and TNN cemented the Position of blue decks being able to battle (linear) Aggro with tools which the later decks were unable to profit from equally and caused a decline of pure aggro since then. Miracles is the first full control deck since the days of Landstill which shaped the metagame around it's mayor presence and gave linear aggro a space to shine they did not have for years.
The discussed idea that the removal of Terminus would give BUG Delver and Shardless a better Miracles matchup (despite Vial.dec having a good Miracles matchup) shows how idiotic the discussion has become, if the goal has ever been to promote non-blue strategies in the first place. I honestly have the impression the whole discussion on Terminus harming non-blue decks is a trojan horse for Delver/blue midrange losing to a 1 mana Wrath they cannot Daze/Pierce properly.
Can we stop using the term "blue" as if it means anything? Your sentence gets really iffy depending if you read "blue" here in the context of Miracles, OmniTell, Storm, Delver or Blade decks for example and especially in regards to the historic circumstances why aggro was able to beat blue decks back in the day (sweepers were too slow, there were no creatures which made aggro/control or blue midrange playable) which are simply no longer the case and most Aggro decks these days have to pickup a tempo subtype to win against blue midrange (see Chalice, Thorn, Wasteland, Thalia, Flickerwisp, Port, Lodestone, Daze, etc.) or feature a combo finish
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I don't agree with the "blue doesn't mean anything" part, but the rest is good. You can speak of preying on "blue" in the context of decks like D&T, Merfolk, Painter, MUD that prey on the omnipresent cantrip engine and/or running Islands. But macro archetypes like aggro, tempo, midrange, combo etc. attack general weaknesses of other macro archetypes (or try to "go over the top" within theirs, ie. Elves+NicFit to Shardless/Jund, Reanimator/TinFins to Storm/Elves/Tide/S&Derp, BUG to RUG, etc.), not specific colors.
I consider it a mayor difference if we talk about "blue" (and counterstrategies) in terms of "decks chaining cantrips" or about "running islands" (like Legend Miracles, Meerfolk, Sea Stompy, Aluren, Foodchain, etc.) in a general way and in regards to the role/potency of (linear) aggro in the respective matchups. You can't label Miracles, Blade, Delver and Storm together as "blue decks" in regards to how Vial Goblins fare against "blue decks today". We should seperate strickly here in my opinion and thats all I wanted to highlight in the discussion which is too dumbed down for my taste at times.
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From Philipp Schönegger's Reddit Q&A. The question: "What are your thoughts on the dig through time based control decks like Golddigger?"
Answer (emphases mine):Basically, while Sensei's Divining Top is the reason Miracles exists, it's not the reason it's (theoretically) oppressive, thus banning SDT is not the right solution to target Miracles specifically, if that's what we need to do to broaden the format. Taking Counterbalance or Terminus (I lean toward the former) would impact the deck enough to open up the field while not having collateral damage. It's having both of these cards in the deck that leads toward "Top abuse."Dig Through Time based Control decks like Golddigger or Grixis have traditionally been simply inferior to Miracles due to one card. And that's Counterbalance. If Miracle didn't have Counterbalance, then there's no way on earth to ever win a match. I mean, a fast Entreat can win a game or two, but you cannot rely on that. When I'm playing against these decks, then all comes down to Counterbalance. Do I have it and manage to resolve it? Well, then this game is going to be very enjoyable (unless they have EE+Ruins) - should I not be able to find and/or resolve Balance in time, then a Dig Through Time Control deck is clearly favored against Miracles.
I mean, they're probably more entertaining to play, though they lack the cost/effect ratio of Balance+Terminus. These two cards just make Miracle work, make it flexible and fast enough to withstand the constant onslaught of a blisteringly fast format like Legacy. If the format was slower, then Dig Through Time (+ a way to deal with balance, like EE+Ruins) would be a better control deck. But this isn't the case. You need to wipe the board as soon as turn 2, which is about the same turn you want your balance-lock to be set up. Maybe I'll write an article on the fundamental turn in Legacy at some point. :)
They ran an interesting one a few years back at another Japanese GP where you could choose a non power nine card and have it as a 4 of. Brainstorm was still the most played card, and Mental Misstep was #2. #expected. I'll try to dig up the results link.
Edit: The Internet.
http://amclegacy.sakura.ne.jp/FSL1.html
Except that:
a.) Terminus and Coutnerbalanace would be basically unplayable or only fringe playable without Sensei's Divining Top. Just like Vengevine was unplayable without Survival of the Fittest, but without Vengevine Survival would still be powerful and probably broken down the line with further new printings. Similarly, SDT will always be powerful tool for control decks that have ways to abuse knowledge of the top 3 cards of their library. If you ban Terminus, CounterTop rears its ugly head at some point in the right deck. If you ban Counterbalance, SDT+Terminus is still a huge detriment to aggro decks.
b.) There is no "collateral damage" from banning Top. Or if there is, it's very negligible. The only decks that lose anything (other than Miracles) are the stray Painter deck that plays 1-2 SDT, the stray ANT deck that plays 1-2 SDT, and a random BGx deck that uses 2-3. And all of these decks are eminently playable, and even just as powerful, without a single SDT in their deck.
fixed this.
But so would 50%+ of the rest of the format as we know it.
The results of banning Brainstorm would be too unpredictable, make too many sweeping effects, and would generate far too much collateral damage.
The results of banning SDT are very simple to predict: Miracles instantly goes from Tier 1 to Tier 2, and a set of new control decks springs up to take its place, increasing diversity in the format. Additionally, more aggro decks that used to fold to Terminus spring up once again and bring even more diversity to the format.
I don't find Miracles oppressive, but if it was, the solution would clearly be to unban Goblin Recruiter.
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